Frustration over a scheduled budget strategy session for 9 a.m. on Monday, March 11 boiled over at Wednesday's city council meeting when residents took the lectern to voice their objections.

The strategy session meeting to tackle where the city wants to head with the budget cuts as the city faces harsh decisions for the 2013-2014 fiscal year.

Some members of the public offered up supportive advice to the council, others called the council to move the time and date and a few fielded accusations of disrupting transparency.

Former Ridgecrest Vice Mayor Jerry Taylor voiced appreciation for the council tackling the issue in March instead of April, but criticized the timing of meeting.

"I would please implore you to consider transparency, which is people being able to participate," Taylor said. Taylor said the March 11 meeting had a very non-standard time that would not be able to allow people to attend.

In a rare break from tradition on public comment, Mayor Dan Clark answered Taylor's question.

"You know from serving on this council for four years how difficult it is to put together schedules of five council members and staff for a meeting that we can all make," Clark said. "At the end of surveying five council members and staff, that was the date we could all meet on."

Clark reminded Taylor and the public that the Monday meeting was not a formal budget hearing, and that no hard numbers would be crunched.

"We've done it in the past when you sat on the council, on two different occasions when we had midday meetings when Kurt Wilson set them," Clark said. "There was no transparency issue then and we can't meet at any other time."

Taylor countered he was bestowing the benefit of past experience on city council and as planning commissioner.

"I remember holding a trash meeting during the day and I also remember the backlash that occurred," he said. "Some of us might be able to make this 9 a.m. meeting, but I also did learn from those experiences that I remember that backlash."

Clark reassured that when it came time to begin crunching concrete numbers it would be an evening meeting.

Ridgecrest resident Dave Matthews expressed his frustration over the time and hindrance to some of the meetings.

"I don't care if it is a strategy or a workshop, I think my concept that it was a workshop like you had in the past, and those even gone a couple of days," he said. "The fact of this is that at 9 a.m. I know a lot of people are going to work."

Mike Neel said he hoped the council had plans to video tape it so people could watch it. Neel also offered up acting as a liaison if people would send him emails or messages and would speak on their behalf.

Page 2 of 3 - Justin O'Neill brought forward some ideas of how to overcome some perceptions of transparency in the community.

"It's been my experience that information has been disseminated through public news, secondhand sources and conjecture and it is inaccurate," O'Neill said.

"We have resources enough to deal with every thing and non-fiscally deal with some our problems," he said. They included getting the community to pitch in, utilizing social network sites like Facebook and Twitter, and holding townhouse meetings.

Budget Process

Overall frustration stems as much from the questionability of transparency as it does the budget process itself.

In an interview Wednesday Taylor pointed out that the budget cycle could be planned a lot earlier, with the city manager getting the ball rolling internally as early as January.

"They could sit down and do this budget process beginning in January," Taylor said.

Taylor also criticized the council for not utilizing the Wednesday meeting to consider the strategy.

"This is about what we want to keep and maintain versus what we want to cut," Taylor said.

In a follow-up email Taylor pointed out the FY 2010 draft budget under former city manager Mike Avery was scheduled to be out by April 2009, not just beginning the process.

"It was a month late because he was waiting on cost for fire protection from the county," Taylor said.

The FY 2010 draft budget had a debut date of June 2009, according to the document.

Taylor also furnished a 14-step schedule for the 2010-11 budget process highlighting deadlines for the budget calendar cycle, with deadline dates beginning in Feb. 2010, a preliminary budget sent to the city council members by April, and a debut date on May 28, 2010. The last three steps, including public hearings, adopting the budget and publishing the adopted budget were set with dates to be determined in 2010.

"Bottom line is that draft budgets have been available by first week of April or May since 2008 even," Taylor said. "The budget process within city hall had staff started by January or February and not March/April."

However, former city council member Steven Morgan disagreed with the recent explosion of discontent.

"There is no reason for ragging on the council for this session," Morgan said Wednesday afternoon.

Morgan said the process over the years have been different.

"We've had morning sessions, afternoon sessions, all day workshops," he said. "We always tried different things and no matter how it was done, not everyone was pleased."

Vice Mayor Chip Holloway said there was little merit to questioning transparency behind the meeting.

"It is a simple case of creating controversy when there is none," Holloway said Thursday.

Holloway also pointed out under the city municipal code, the council was tasked with putting together the budget.

Page 3 of 3 - "The city manager makes the city budget," Holloway said. Holloway indicated the city manager set up dates and tasks for the finance director and department heads, something reflected in a sample 2010 budget timeline provided by Taylor.

Holloway voiced his belief that the majority of the public would support the budget strategy session.

"It is a small segment of the population that has some animosity against the mayor and staff and certain council members, and are signaling out this issue and exploiting an opportunity," Holloway said.

Mayor Pro Tem Jason Patin pointed out committees at the federal and state levels held meetings at all times of the day, but there was no cry of transparency issues at those levels.

"The public wanted us to get moving on the budget and we call the meeting and now we get criticized," Patin said Thursday. "That's ridiculous."

Patin said the meeting was open and the public invited, and the council typically made every effort to hold evening sessions.

"It's hypocritical to have a former city council member criticize us on the meeting when's he done it before," Patin said.

He reiterated the absurdity of a lack of transparency and attempt to keep the matter silent.

"It (transparency issues) doesn't exist and it is not true," he said.

Clark pointed out Thursday the matter of transparency was reserved.

"The accusers are the ones with transparency issues and are ones that have hidden agendas," Clark said. What are they hiding?"

He said the city would not benefit from such tactics, especially in the city's current fiscal dilemma.